Postmodernism in literature. Key Features

It is believed that postmodernism in literature first appeared in the United States, and then gradually spread to many European countries. People became more interested

• literary,
• post-Freudian,
• intellectual concepts.

Moreover, for many reasons, it was the American "soil" that turned out to be the most favorable for the perception of such new trends. The fact is that in the 50s many unknown and completely new trends in literature and art appeared. All these growing trends needed to be comprehended. As a result, it turned out that in the 70s a change in the cultural paradigm began gradually, where postmodernism in literature took the place of modernism.

The first examples of postmodernism in literature

Already in 1969, an article entitled “Cross the Borders, Fill the Moats” was published, which turned out to be significant in this respect. The author of this sensational article was Leslie Fiedler, a well-known literary critic. In this article, one could clearly see the whole pathos of combining the language of mass literature with the language of modernism. Both completely different poles were combined and brought closer together in order to create an opportunity to erase the boundaries between fiction, which the aesthetes despised, and elitist and modernist literature.

The ideas of poststructuralists from France, who migrated to the United States at that time, not only allowed a much better understanding of all the processes arising in US art, but also added new impulses to discussions regarding postmodernism.

Development of postmodernism

The new concept of postmodernism (which originated in the United States) over time influenced not only art and literature, but also many sciences:

• political,
• business,
• right,
• psychoanalysis,
• management,
• sociology,
• psychology,
• criminology.

Moreover, in rethinking American culture, art and literature, post-structuralism served as a methodological basis in postmodernism. All of this contributed to a change in racial and ethnic points of view among Americans. Postmodernism in literature has also become fertile ground for the emergence of a feminist approach.

And in the 90s, postmodernism gradually penetrated the spiritual culture of society.

The main features of postmodernism in literature

Most researchers believe that under postmodernism there was an artificial destruction of traditional views and ideas about the completeness, harmony, integrity of all aesthetic systems. There were also the first attempts to identify the main features of postmodernism:

1. addiction to the incompatible quotation compound;
2. blurring of binary and too rigid oppositions;
3. hybridization of different genres, which gives rise to mutant new forms;
4. ironic revaluation of many values, decanonization of most conventions and canons;
5. erasure of personality;
6. playing with texts, metalanguage games, theatricalization of texts;
7. rethinking the history of human culture and intertextuality;
8. mastering Chaos in a playful manner;
9. pluralism of styles, models and cultural languages;
10. organization of texts in a two- or multi-level version, adapted simultaneously for a mass and elite reader;
11. the phenomenon of "death of the author" and the author's mask;
12. plurality of points of view and meanings;
13. incompleteness, openness to constructions, fundamental asymmetry;
14. reception of "double coding".

Texts with a capital letter have become the most basic object of postmodernism. In addition, cultural mediation, mockery and general confusion began to appear in this direction.

Why is the literature of Russian postmodernism so popular? Everyone can relate to the works that relate to this phenomenon in different ways: some may like them, some may not, but still such literature is read, so it is important to understand why it attracts readers so much? Perhaps young people, as the main audience for such works, after leaving school, "overfed" by classical literature (which is undoubtedly beautiful), want to breathe fresh "postmodernism", albeit somewhere rough, somewhere even absurd, but so new and very emotional.

Russian postmodernism in literature falls on the second half of the 20th century, when people brought up on realistic literature were shocked and bewildered. After all, deliberate non-worship of the laws of literary and speech etiquette, the use of obscene language were not inherent in traditional trends.

The theoretical foundations of postmodernism were laid in the 1960s by French scientists and philosophers. Its Russian manifestation differs from the European one, but it would not have been such without its “progenitor”. It is believed that the postmodern beginning in Russia was laid when in 1970. Venedikt Erofeev creates the poem "Moscow-Petushki". This work, which we have carefully analyzed in this one, has a strong influence on the development of Russian postmodernism.

Brief description of the phenomenon

Postmodernism in literature is a large-scale cultural phenomenon that captured all spheres of art towards the end of the 20th century, replacing the equally well-known phenomenon of "modernism". There are several basic principles of postmodernism:

• The world as text;
• Death of the Author;
• The birth of the reader;
• Scriptor;
• Lack of canons: there is no good or bad;
• Pastish;
• Intertext and intertextuality.

Since the main idea in postmodernism is that the author can no longer write anything fundamentally new, the idea of ​​the “death of the Author” is created. This means, in essence, that the writer is not the author of his books, since everything has already been written before him, and the subsequent is only a citation of previous creators. That is why the author in postmodernism does not play a significant role, reproducing his thoughts on paper, he is just the one who presents what was written earlier in a different way, coupled with his personal style of writing, his original presentation and heroes.

"The death of the author" as one of the principles of postmodernism gives rise to another idea that the text initially does not have any meaning, put in by the author. Since a writer is only a physical reproducer of something that has already been written earlier, he cannot put his subtext where nothing fundamentally new can be. It is from here that another principle is born - "the birth of the reader", which means that it is the reader, and not the author, who puts his meaning into what he read. The composition, the vocabulary selected specifically for this style, the character of the characters, major and minor, the city or place where the action unfolds, excites in him his personal sensations from what he read, pushes him to search for meaning, which he initially puts on his own from the first lines he read.

And it is this principle of “the birth of the reader” that carries one of the main messages of postmodernism - any interpretation of the text, any attitude, any sympathy or antipathy towards someone or something has a right to exist, there is no division into “good” and “bad” ", As it happens in traditional literary trends.

In fact, all of the above postmodern principles carry a single meaning - the text can be understood in different ways, it can be accepted in different ways, it can sympathize with someone, but not with someone, there is no division into “good” and “ evil ”, anyone who reads this or that work, understands it in his own way and, proceeding from his inner sensations and feelings, knows himself, and not what is happening in the text. When reading, a person analyzes himself and his attitude to what he read, and not the author and his attitude to it. He will not look for the meaning or subtext laid down by the writer, because he does not and cannot be, he, that is, the reader, will rather try to find what he himself puts into the text. The most important thing we said, the rest, including the main features of postmodernism, you can read.

Representatives

There are a lot of representatives of postmodernism, but I would like to talk about two of them: about Alexei Ivanov and Pavel Sanaev.

1. Alexey Ivanov is an original and talented writer who has appeared in Russian literature of the 21st century. He was nominated for the National Bestseller award three times. Laureate of the Eureka! And Start literary prizes, as well as D.N. Mamin-Sibiryak and P.P. Bazhova.
2. Pavel Sanaev is an equally brilliant and outstanding writer of the 20th and 21st centuries. Winner of the October magazine and Triumph magazine awards for the novel Bury Me Behind the Skirting Board.

Examples of

The geographer drank the globe

Aleksey Ivanov is the author of such famous works as "The Geographer Drank the Globe", "Dorm-on-Blood", "Heart of Parma", "Gold of Riot" and many others. The first novel is mostly heard in film with Konstantin Khabensky in the title role, but the novel on paper is no less interesting and exciting than on the screen.

"The Geographer Drank His Globe on Drink" is a novel about the Perm school, about teachers, about obnoxious children, and about an equally obnoxious geographer, who is not a geographer by profession at all. The book contains a lot of irony, sadness, kindness and humor. This creates the feeling of being fully present at the events taking place. Of course, as it corresponds to the genre, there is a lot of veiled obscene and very original vocabulary here, and the main feature is the presence of the jargon of the lowest social environment.

The whole narration seems to keep the reader in suspense, and now, when it seems that something should work out for the hero, this elusive ray of the sun is about to peep out from behind the gathering gray clouds, as the reader goes berserk again, because luck and well-being of the heroes are limited only by the reader's hope for their existence somewhere at the end of the book.

This is what characterizes the story of Alexei Ivanov. His books make you think, get nervous, empathize with the heroes or get angry with them somewhere, bewildered or laugh at their witticisms.

Bury Me Behind the Baseboard

As for Pavel Sanaev and his emotional work "Bury Me Behind the Skirting Board", it is a biographical story written by the author in 1994 based on his childhood, when he lived with his grandfather's family for nine years. The main character is a boy Sasha, a second grader, whose mother, not caring much about her son, puts him in the care of his grandmother. And, as we all know, it is contraindicated for children to stay with their grandparents for more than a certain period, otherwise there is either a colossal conflict based on misunderstanding, or, like the protagonist of this novel, everything goes much further, right down to mental problems and a ruined childhood.

This novel makes a stronger impression than, for example, "The Geographer Drank the Globe" or anything else from this genre, since the main character is a child, a boy who is not yet ripe. He cannot change his life on his own, somehow help himself, as the characters of the above-named work or "House-on-Blood" could do. Therefore, there is much more sympathy for him than for the others, and there is nothing to be angry with him for, he is a child, a real victim of real circumstances.

In the process of reading, one again encounters jargon of the lowest social level, obscene language, numerous and very catchy insults towards the boy. The reader is constantly indignant at what is happening, he wants to quickly read the next paragraph, the next line or page to make sure that this horror is over, and the hero escaped from this captivity of passions and nightmares. But no, the genre does not allow anyone to be happy, therefore this very tension is drawn on all 200 book pages. The ambiguous actions of the grandmother and mother, the independent "digestion" of everything that happens on behalf of the little boy and the very presentation of the text are worth reading this novel.

Dorm-on-blood

"Dorm-on-blood" is a book of Aleksey Ivanov, already known to us, the story of one student dorm, which, by the way, is the only place where most of the story takes place. The novel is saturated with emotions, because we are talking about students whose blood boils in their veins and youthful maximalism seethes. However, despite this certain recklessness and recklessness, they are great lovers of philosophical conversations, talk about the universe and God, judge each other and blame, repent of their actions and make excuses for them. And at the same time, they have absolutely no desire to improve and facilitate their existence even a little.

The work is literally replete with an abundance of obscene language, which at first may alienate someone from reading the novel, but even so, it is worth reading it.

Unlike previous works, where the hope for something good was extinguished already in the middle of reading, here it regularly lights up and goes out throughout the entire book, which is why the ending hits the emotions so hard and worries the reader so much.

How does postmodernism manifest itself in these examples?

That the hostel, that the city of Perm, that the house of Sasha Savelyev's grandmother are citadels of everything bad that lives in people, everything that we are afraid of and which we always try to avoid: poverty, humiliation, sorrow, insensitivity, greed, vulgarity, and so on. Heroes are helpless, regardless of their age and social status, they are victims of circumstances, laziness, alcohol. Postmodernism in these books manifests itself literally in everything: in the ambiguity of the characters, and in the uncertainty of the reader in his attitude towards them, and in the vocabulary of the dialogues, and in the hopelessness of the existence of the characters, in their pity and despair.

These works are very difficult for sensitive and over-emotional people, but you cannot regret what you have read, because each of these books contains nutritious and healthy food for thought.

Interesting? Keep it on your wall!

The movement, called postmodernism, emerged at the end of the 20th century and combined the philosophical, worldview and cultural sentiments of its time. There was also art, religion, philosophy. Postmodernism, not striving to study the deepest problems of being, gravitates towards simplicity, a superficial reflection of the world. Therefore, the literature of postmodernism is aimed not at understanding the world, but accepting it as it is.

Postmodernism in Russia

The forerunners of postmodernism were modernism and avant-garde, which sought to revive the traditions of the Silver Age. Russian postmodernism in literature has abandoned the mythologization of reality, to which the previous literary trends gravitated. But at the same time, he creates his own mythology, resorting to it as the most understandable cultural language. Postmodernist writers conducted a dialogue with chaos in their works, presenting it as a real model of life, where the harmony of the world is a utopia. At the same time, a search for a compromise was going on between space and chaos.

Russian postmodern writers

The ideas considered by various authors in their works sometimes represent strange unstable hybrids, designed to conflict forever, being absolutely incompatible concepts. So, in the books of V. Erofeev, A. Bitov and S. Sokolov compromises are presented, paradoxical in essence, between life and death. T. Tolstoy and V. Pelevin - between fantasy and reality, and Petsukh - between law and absurdity. The fact that postmodernism in Russian literature is based on combinations of opposite concepts: the sublime and the base, pathos and mockery, fragmentation and integrity, oxymoron becomes its main principle.

Among the postmodernist writers, in addition to those already listed, include S. Dovlatov, L. Petrushevskaya, V. Aksyonova. In their works, one can observe the main characteristic features of postmodernism, such as understanding art as a way of organizing text according to special rules; an attempt to convey a vision of the world through organized chaos on the pages of a literary work; gravitation towards parody and denial of authority; emphasizing the conventionality of artistic and visual techniques used in works; connection within one text of different literary eras and genres. The ideas that postmodernism proclaimed in literature indicate its continuity with modernism, which in turn called for a departure from civilization and a return to savagery, which leads to the highest point of involution - chaos. But in concrete literary works one cannot see only the desire for destruction, there is always a creative tendency. They can manifest themselves in different ways, one prevail over the other. For example, Vladimir Sorokin's works are dominated by the desire for destruction.

Having formed in Russia during the 80-90s, postmodernism in literature has absorbed the collapse of ideals and the desire to escape from the orderliness of the world, therefore, a mosaic and fragmented consciousness arose. Each author refracted this in his own way in his work. L. Petrushevskaya's works combine a craving for naturalistic nudity in describing reality and a striving to get out of it into the realm of the mystical. The feeling of peace in the post-Soviet era was characterized precisely as chaotic. Often in the center of the plot of postmodernists is the act of creativity, and the main character is the writer. It is not so much the character's relationship with real life that is investigated as with the text. This is observed in the works of A. Bitov, Yu. Buida, S. Sokolov. There is an effect of literature's isolation on itself, when the world is perceived as a text. The main character, often identified with the author, pays a terrible price for its imperfection when faced with reality.

It can be predicted that, being oriented towards destruction and chaos, postmodernism in literature will one day leave the stage and give way to another trend aimed at a systemic worldview. Because sooner or later, the state of chaos gives way to order.

Postmodernism - (English postmodernism) - a general name referring to the latest trends in contemporary art. It was introduced into widespread use in 1969 by the American literary critic L. Friedler. In the specialized literature, there is no consensus on the meaning of the term "postmodernism". As a rule, postmodernism is attributed to the post-war European and American culture, but there are also attempts to extend this concept to an earlier period or, conversely, to attribute it to the art of the future, after or outside of modernity. Despite the vagueness of the term, certain realities of contemporary art stand behind it.

The concept of "postmodernism" can be interpreted in broad and narrow meanings. In a broad sense, postmodernism is a state of culture as a whole, a set of ideas, concepts, a special view of the world... In a narrow sense, postmodernism is a phenomenon of aesthetics, a literary direction in which the ideas of postmodernism are embodied in a broad sense.

Postmodernism emerged in the second half of the 20th century. R. Barth, J. Kristeva, J. Baudrillard, J. Derrida, M. Foucault, W. Eco played a special role in the formation of the ideas of postmodernism. In practice, these ideas were implemented by A. Murdoch, J. Fowles, J. Barnes, M. Pavich, I. Calvino and many others. dr.

The main elements of postmodern consciousness:

Total relativism- the relativity of everything and everyone, the absence of absolute truths and precise guidelines. There are many points of view, and each of them is correct in its own way, so the concept of truth becomes meaningless. The world of postmodernism is extremely relative, everything in it is unstable and there is nothing absolute. All traditional guidelines have been revised and refuted. The concepts of good, evil, love, justice and many others. others have lost their meaning.

A consequence of total relativism is the concept end of history, which means the denial of the objective linear nature of the historical process. Some single history of mankind does not exist, there are metanarratives fortified in the mind, i.e. large-scale explanatory systems that those in power create for their own purposes. Metanarratives are, for example, Christianity, Marxism. Postmodernism is characterized by a distrust of metanarratives.

Epistemological uncertainty- a peculiarity of the worldview, in which the world is perceived as absurd, chaotic, inexplicable. Episteme- This is a set of ideas, which in a given era defines the boundaries of the true (close to the concept of a scientific paradigm). Epistemological uncertainty arises during the period of epistemic change, when the old episteme no longer meets the needs of society, and the new one has not yet formed.

Simulacrum Is an object that arises as a result of the simulation process, not related to reality, but perceived as real, the so-called. "Connotation without denotation". The central concept of postmodernism, this concept existed before, but it was in the context of postmodern aesthetics that it was developed by J. Borillard. “A simulacrum is a pseudo-thing that replaces“ agonizing reality ”with post-reality through simulation, passing off absence as presence, blurring the distinction between real and imagined. He occupies in non-classical postmodern aesthetics the place that belonged to the artistic image in traditional aesthetic systems ”.

Simulation- the generation of the hyperreal with the help of models of the real that do not have their own sources in reality. The process of generating simulacra.

The main elements of postmodern aesthetics:

Synthesis Is one of the fundamental principles of postmodern aesthetics. Anything can be combined with anything: different types of art, linguistic styles, genres, seemingly incompatible ethical and aesthetic principles, high and low, mass and elite, beautiful and ugly, etc. R. Barth in the works of the 50-60s proposed to abolish literature as such, and in return for it, to formulate a universal form of creative activity that could combine theoretical developments and aesthetic practices. Many classics of postmodernism are both theoretical researchers and practical writers (W. Eco, A. Murdoch, J. Kristeva).

Intertextuality- special dialogical relations of texts, built as a mosaic of citations, which are the result of absorption and modification of other texts, orientation to the context. The concept was introduced by Y. Kristeva. "Any text is located at the intersection of many texts, rereading, accentuation, condensation, movement and deepening of which it is" (F. Sollers). Intertextuality is not a synthesis, the life-giving essence of which is the "fusion of artistic energies", the combination of thesis with antithesis, tradition with innovation. Intertextuality opposes "fusion" to "the competitiveness of a specializing group," which was called modernism, then postmodernism.

Non-linear reading... It is connected with the theory of J. Deleuze and F. Guattari about two types of culture: “arboreal” culture and “rhizome culture”. The first type is associated with the principle of imitation of nature, the transformation of world chaos into aesthetic space through creative effort, here the book is a "tracing paper", a "photograph" of the world. The second type of culture is embodied in postmodern art. “If the world is chaos, then the book will become not space, but chaosmos, not a tree, but a rhizome. The book-rhizome implements a fundamentally new type of aesthetic ties. All its points will be interconnected, but these connections are structureless, multiple, tangled, and they suddenly break off every now and then. " Here the book is no longer a "tracing paper", but a "map" of the world. “It is not the death of the book that is coming, but the birth of a new type of reading: the main thing for the reader will be not to understand the content of the book, but to use it as a mechanism, to experiment with it. The culture of rhizomes will become a kind of “buffet” for the reader: everyone will take whatever he wants from the book-plate ”.

Dual coding- the principle of text organization, according to which the work is addressed simultaneously to differently trained readers who can read different layers of the work. An adventurous plot and deep philosophical problems can coexist in one text. An example of a work with double coding is U. Eco's novel "The Name of the Rose", which can be read both as a fascinating detective story and as a "semiological" novel.

The world as text. The theory of postmodernism was created on the basis of the concept of one of the most influential modern philosophers (as well as a culturologist, literary critic, semiotics, linguist) Jacques Derrida. According to Derrida, "the world is text," "text is the only possible model of reality." The second most important theorist of poststructuralism is considered to be a philosopher, culturologist Michel Foucault. His position is often seen as a continuation of the Nietzschean line of thinking. So, for Foucault, history is the largest manifestation of human madness, the total chaos of the unconscious.

Other followers of Derrida (they are like-minded people, opponents, and independent theorists): in France - Gilles Deleuze, Julia Kristeva, Roland Barthes. In the USA - Yale School (Yale University).

According to the theorists of postmodernism, language functions according to its own laws. Shortly speaking, the world is comprehended by a person only in the form of this or that story, a story about him... Or, in other words, in the form of a "literary" discourse (from the Latin discurs - "logical construction").

Doubt about the reliability of scientific knowledge led postmodernists to the conviction that the most adequate comprehension of reality is available only to intuitive - "poetic thinking". The specific vision of the world as chaos, appearing to consciousness only in the form of disordered fragments, has received the definition of "postmodern sensitivity."

From the second half of the 20th century, philosophy began to offer humanity to come to terms with the fact that there are no absolute beginnings in our existence, but this was perceived not as the impotence of the human mind, but as a kind of wealth of our nature, since the absence of a primary ideal stimulates the diversity of the vision of life. There is no single correct approach - they are all correct, adequate. This is how the situation of postmodernism is formed.

From the point of view of postmodernism, modernism is characterized by the desire to know the beginning of the beginnings. And postmodernism comes to the idea of ​​abandoning these aspirations, because our world is a world of varieties, movements of meanings, while none of them is the most faithful. Humanity must accept this diversity and not pretend to comprehend the truth. The burden of tragedy and chaos is removed from a person, but he realizes that his choice is one of many possible.

Postmodernism absolutely consciously revises the entire literary heritage. It becomes today the existing cultural context - a huge cultural unwritten encyclopedia, where all texts are related to each other as part of the intertext.

Any text turns out to be a quote from another text. We know something, therefore we can express it in words. How do we know them? Heard, read - recognized. Everything we don't know is also described in words.

Our culture is made up of a cultural context. Literature is part of the cultural context in which we live. We can use these works, they are part of the reality, the picture of which we create for ourselves.

All our knowledge is information that we have learned. She comes to us in the form of words that someone draws up. But this someone is not the bearer of absolute knowledge - this information is just interpretation. Everyone should understand that he is not a bearer of absolutely knowledge, but at the same time, our interpretations can be more or less complete, depending on the amount of processed information, but they cannot be correct or incorrect.

A distinctive feature of postmodernism - conceptuality.

The work fixes the writer's vision of the world, and does not just describe the world. We get a picture as it appears in the mind of the author.

1. Features of Russian postmodernism. Its representatives

In a broad sense postmodernism- This is a general trend in European culture, which has its own philosophical base; this is a kind of worldview, a special perception of reality. In a narrow sense, postmodernism is a trend in literature and art, expressed in the creation of specific works.

Postmodernism entered the literary scene as a ready-made direction, as a monolithic formation, although Russian postmodernism is the sum of several trends and trends: conceptualism and neo-baroque.

Postmodernism emerged as a radical, revolutionary movement. It is based on deconstruction (the term was introduced by Jacque Derrida in the early 60s) and decentration. Deconstruction is a complete rejection of the old, the creation of the new at the expense of the old, and decentration is the dissipation of the solid meanings of any phenomenon. The center of any system is a fiction, the authority of power is eliminated, the center depends on various factors.

Thus, in the aesthetics of postmodernism, reality disappears under the flow of simulacra. (simulacrum- (from Latin Simulacrum, Idola, Phantasma) -conceptphilosophical discourse, introduced in ancientthoughts to characterize, along with images-copies of things, such images that are far from similarity to things and express the spiritual condition, phantasms, chimeras, phantoms, ghosts, hallucinations, dream representations,fears, delirium)(Gilles Deleuze). The world turns into a chaos of simultaneously coexisting and overlapping texts, cultural languages, myths. A person lives in a world of simulacra created by himself or by other people.

In this regard, the concept of intertextuality should also be mentioned, when the created text becomes a fabric of quotations taken from previously written texts, a kind of palimpsest. As a result of this, an infinite number of associations arise, and the meaning expands to infinity.

Some works of postmodernism are characterized by a rhizomatic structure (rhizome is one of the key concepts of the philosophy of poststructuralism and postmodernism. Rhizome must resist the invariable linear structures (of both being and thinking), which, in their opinion, are typical of classical European culture.), Where there are no oppositions , beginning and end.

The basic concepts of postmodernism also include a remake and a narrative. A remake is a new version of an already written work (compare: Pelevin's texts). A narrative is a system of ideas about history. History is not a change of events in their chronological order, but a myth created by the consciousness of people.

So, the postmodern text is the interaction of the languages ​​of the game, it does not imitate life, like the traditional one. In postmodernism, the author's function also changes: not to create, creating something new, but to recycle the old.

Mark Naumovich Lipovetsky, relying on the basic postmodern principle of paralogism and on the concept of “paralogy”, highlights some of the features of Russian postmodernism in comparison with the West. Paralogy is "a contradictory destruction designed to shift the structures of intelligence as such." Paralogy creates a situation opposite to the situation of binarity, that is, one in which there is a tough opposition with the priority of some one principle, moreover, the possibility of the existence of an opposing principle is recognized. The paralogicality lies in the fact that both of these principles exist simultaneously, interact, but at the same time the existence of a compromise between them is completely excluded. From this point of view, Russian postmodernism differs from the Western one:

* focusing precisely on the search for compromises and dialogical conjugations between the poles of oppositions, on the formation of a "meeting place" between the fundamentally incompatible in the classical, modernist, as well as dialectical consciousness, between philosophical and aesthetic categories.

* at the same time, these compromises are fundamentally "paralogical", they remain explosive, unstable and problematic, they do not remove contradictions, but generate contradictory integrity.

The category of simulacra is also somewhat different. Simulacres control the behavior of people, their perception, ultimately, their consciousness, which ultimately leads to the "death of subjectivity": the human "I" is also made up of the totality of simulacra.

The set of simulacra in postmodernism is not the opposite of reality, but its absence, that is, emptiness. At the same time, in a paradoxical way, simulacra become a source of reality generation only if they are realized as simulative, i.e. imaginary, fictitious, illusory nature, only on condition of initial disbelief in their reality. The existence of the category of simulacra forces its interaction with reality. Thus, a certain mechanism of aesthetic perception appears, which is characteristic of Russian postmodernism.

In addition to the opposition Simulacrum - Reality, other oppositions are also recorded in postmodernism, such as Fragment - Integrity, Personal - Impersonal, Memory - Oblivion, Power - Freedom, etc. Fragmentation - Integrity The category of Emptiness is also acquiring a different direction in Russian postmodernism. V. Pelevin's emptiness "does not reflect anything, and therefore nothing can be predestined on it, a certain surface, absolutely inert, and so much so that no weapon that has entered into confrontation can shake its serene presence." Due to this, Pelevin's emptiness has ontological supremacy over everything else and is an independent value. Emptiness will always remain Emptiness.

Opposition Personal - Impersonal is realized in practice as a person in the form of a changeable fluid integrity.

Memory - Oblivion- directly by A. Bitov it is realized in the position on culture: “… in order to preserve - it is necessary to forget”.

Based on these oppositions, M. Lipovetsky deduces another, broader opposition Chaos - Space... “Chaos is a system whose activity is opposite to the indifferent disorder that reigns in a state of equilibrium; no stability any longer ensures the correctness of the macroscopic description, all the possibilities are actualized, coexist and interact with each other, and the system turns out at the same time to be everything that it can be ”. To designate this state, Lipovetsky introduces the concept of "Chaosmos", which takes the place of harmony.

In Russian postmodernism, the lack of purity of the direction is also noted - for example, avant-garde utopianism (in the surrealist utopia of freedom from Sokolov's School for Fools) and echoes of the aesthetic ideal of classical realism, be it Bitov's “dialectic of the soul” coexist with postmodern skepticism or "mercy to the fallen" by V. Erofeev and T. Tolstoy.

A feature of Russian postmodernism is the problem of the hero - the author - the narrator, who in most cases exist independently of each other, but their constant belonging is the archetype of the holy fool. More precisely, the archetype of the holy fool in the text is the center, the point where the main lines converge. Moreover, it can perform two functions (at least):

1. The classic version of the border subject, floating between diametrical cultural codes.

2. At the same time, this archetype is a version of the context, a link with a powerful branch of the cultural archaic